(a) Synods. Synods as a part of the machinery of the Church grew up spontaneously. The meeting of the Apostles and Elders' at Jerusalem (Acts xv.) exemplifies the only way in which a practical resolution on a matter affecting a number of persons with independent rights can possibly be arrived at, viz., by mutual discussion and agreement. Long before the age of Athanasius it had been recognised in the Church that the bishops were the persons exclusively entitled to represent their flocks for such a purpose; in other words, Councils of bishops had come to constitute the legislative and judicial body in the Church (Eus. V. C. i. 51). Both of these functions, and especially the latter, involved the further prerogative of judging of doctrine, as in the case of Paul of Samosata. But the whole system had grown up out of occasional emergencies, and no recognised laws existed to define the extent of conciliar authority, or the relations between one Council and another should their decisions conflict. Not even the area covered by the jurisdiction of a given Council was defined (Can. Nic. 5). We see a Synod at Arles deciding a case affecting Africa, and reviewing the decision of a previous Synod at Rome; a Council at Tyre trying the case of a bishop of Alexandria; a Council at Sardica in the West deposing bishops in the East, and restoring those whom Eastern Synods had deposed; we find Acacius and his fellows deposed at Seleucia, then in a few weeks deposing their deposers at Constantinople; Meletius appointed and deposed by the same Synod at Antioch in 361, and in the following year resuming his see without question. All is chaos. The extent to which a Synod succeeds in enforcing its decisions depends on the extent to which it obtains de facto recognition. The canons of the Council of Antioch (341) are accepted as Church law, while its creeds are condemned as Arian (de Syn. 22-25).
We look in vain for any statement of principle on the part of Athanasius to reduce this confusion to order. The classical passage in his writings is the letter he has preserved from Julius of Rome to the Eastern bishops (Apol. c. Ar. 20-35). The Easterns insist strongly on the authority of Councils, in the interests of their deposition of Athanasius, &c., at Tyre. Julius can only reply by invoking an old-established custom of the Church, ratified, he says, at Nicæa (Can. 5?), that the decisions of one Council may be revised by another; a process which leads to no finality. The Sardican canons of three years later drew up, for judicial purposes only, a system of procedure, devolving on Julius (or possibly on the Roman bishop for the time being) the duty of deciding, upon the initiative of the parties concerned, whether in the case of a deposed bishop a new trial of the case was desirable, and permitting him to take part in such new trial by his deputies. But Athanasius never alludes to any such procedure, nor to the canons in question. (Compare above, pp. xlii., xlvi.).
The absence of any a priori law relating to the authority of Synods applies to general as well as to local Councils. The conception of a general Council did not give rise to Nicæa, but vice versa (see above, p. xvii.). The precedent for great Councils had already been set at Antioch (268-9) and Arles (314); the latter in fact seems to be indirectly called by S. Augustine plenarium universæ ecclesiæ concilium; but the widely representative character of the Nicene Council, and the impressive circumstances under which it met, stamped upon it from the first a recognised character of its own. Again and again (de Decr. 4, 27, Orat. i. 7, Ep. Æg. 5, &c., &c.) Athanasius presses the Arians with their rejection of the decision of a world-wide' Council, contrasting it (e.g. de Syn. 21) with the numerous and indecisive Councils held by them. He protests (Ep. Æg. 5, Tom. ad Ant., &c.) against the idea that any new creed is necessary or to be desired in addition to the Nicene. But in doing so, he does not suggest by a syllable that the Council was formally and a priori infallible, independently of the character of its decision as faithfully corresponding to the tradition of the Apostles. Its authority is secondary to that of Scripture (de Syn. 6, sub. fin.), and its scriptural character is its justification (ib.). In short, Mr. Gwatkin speaks within the mark when he disclaims for Athan. any mechanical theory [95] of conciliar infallibility. To admit this candidly is not to depreciate, but to acknowledge, the value of the great Synod of Nicæa; and to acknowledge it, not on the technical grounds of later ecclesiastical law, but on grounds which are those of Athanasius himself. (On the general subject see D.C.A. 475-484, and Hatch, B.L. vii.)
(b) Jurisdiction of bishops over bishops. The fully-developed and organised patriarchal' system does not meet us in the Nicene age. The bishops of important towns, however, exercise a very real, though not definable authority over their neighbours. This is especially true of Imperial residences. The migration of Eusebius to Nicomedia and afterwards to Constantinople broke through the time-honoured rule of the Church, but set the precedent commonly followed ever afterwards. In Egypt, although the name patriarch' was as yet unheard, the authority of the Bishop of Alexandria was almost absolute. The name archbishop' is here used for the first time. It is first applied apparently to Meletius (Apol. Ar. 71) in his list of clergy, but at a later date (about 358) to Athanasius in a contemporary inscription (see p. 564^a, note 1). At the beginning of his episcopate (supra, p. xxxvii.) we find him requested to ordain in a diocese of Upper Egypt by its bishop. He sends bishops on deputations (Fest. Ind. xxv., &c.), and exercises ordinary jurisdiction over bishops and people of Libya and Pentapolis (cf. reference to Synesius, supr., p. lxii.). This was a condition of things dating at least from the time of Dionysius (p. 178, note 2). In particular he had practically the appointment of bishops for all Egypt, so that in the course of his long episcopate all the Egyptian sees were manned by his faithful adherents (cf. p. 493). The mention of Dionysius suggests the question of the relation of the see of Alexandria to that of Rome, and of the latter to the Church generally. On the former point, what is necessary will be said in the Introd. to the de Sent. Dion. With regard to the wider question, Athanasius expresses reverence for that bishopric because it is an Apostolic throne,' and for Rome, because it is the metropolis of Romania' (p. 282). That is his only utterance on the subject. Such reverence ought, he says, to have secured Liberius from the treatment to which he had been subjected. The language cited excludes the idea of any divinely-given headship of the Church vested in the Roman bishop, for his object is to magnify the outrageous conduct of Constantius and the Arians. Still less can anything be elicited from the account given by Ath. of the case of the Dionysii, or of his own relations to successive Roman bishops. He speaks of them as his beloved brothers and fellow-ministers (e.g., p. 489) and cordially. welcomes their sympathy and powerful support, without any thought of jurisdiction. But he furnishes us with materials, in the letter of Julius, for estimating not his own view of the Roman see, but that held by its occupant. The origin of the proceedings was the endeavour of the Easterns to procure recognition at Rome and in the West for their own nominee to the bishopric of Alexandria. They had requested Julius to hold a Council, and to be himself the judge if he so pleased' (Apol. c. Ar. 20). This was intended to frighten Athanasius, but not in the least, as the sequel shews, to submit the decisions of a Council to revision by a single bishop. Julius summoned a Council as described above (p. xliii.), and at the end of a long period of delay and controversy sent a letter expressing his view of the case to the Orientals. This document has been already discussed (p. xliv.). It forms an important landmark in the history of papal claims, standing at least as significantly in contrast with those of the successors of Julius, as with those of his predecessors.
(g) Bishops and Councils. The superiority of councils to single bishops (including those of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch) was questioned by no one in this age. Julius claims the support, not of authority inherent in his see, but of canons, and on the basis of them claims a voice in matters affecting the Church at large, not in his own name, but in that of us all, that so a just sentence might proceed from all' (Apol. c. Ar. 35). Again, just as the judgment of his predecessor Melchiades and his council was revised at Arles in 314 (Augustin. Ep. 105. 8), so the case of Athanasius and Marcellus was reheard at the Council of Sardica three years after the decision of Julius and his council. The council was the supreme organ of the Church for legislative, judicial, and doctrinal purposes; had any other of superior or even equal rank been recognised, or had the authority of councils themselves been defined a priori by a system of Church law, the confusion of the fourth century would not have arisen. Whether or no the age would have gained, we at least should have been the losers.
[93] Athanasius is not always innocent of the method of which he complains; e.g. when he uses Isa. i. 11, pleres eimi, as a proof of the Divine Perfection.
[94] The idea of a mysterious unwritten tradition is a legacy of Gnosticism to the Church. Irenæus, in order to meet the Gnostic appeal to a supposed unwritten Apostolic tradition, confronts it with the consistency of the public and normal teaching of the Churches everywhere, of which the Roman Church is a convenient microcosm or compendium. The idea of a paradosis agraphos is adopted by Clement and Origen, and passes from the latter to Eusebius, and to the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil de Sp. S. 27, applies it only to practical details), Epiphanius, and later writers. Details in Harnack ii. 90, note, cf. Salmon, Infallibility, Lect. ix. On the somewhat different subject of the Disciplina Arcani,' see Herzog-Plitt. s.v. Arkan-Disciplia'
[95] What is conspicuously true of the Second General Council is in reality not less true of the First. Its high authority to later ages is due not to its formal character as a council, but to the character of its work; the consent of the Church, and that not readily given, but as the result of a long process of searching and sifting, has given to it its irreformable' authority. Its authority is expressly put on a par with that of the Antiochene Synod of c. 269, by Ath. de Syn. 43 (consult the whole discussion, pp. 473, 475, &c.). Short of a council which should include every bishop of the entire Church, in unanimous agreement,--an impossible contingency,--the claims of any given council to be truly ecumenical are relative, not absolute; and no consistent theory is possible of the conditions under which a council could by virtue of its constitution claim infallibility for its decisions. The supposed infallibility of general councils lies in reality outside them, in the authority which sanctions and consecrates their decisions. According to the precedent of Nicæa this is the Church diffusive' (cf. p. 489, and Pusey, Councils, p. 225, sq.), and such consent, again, must necessarily be partial and relative. If a more tangible and expeditious theory is wanted, we have it in the Roman system, according to which a council is infallible if ratified by the Pope. This at once puts all such councils, whether local or general, on one level, and affords a ready criterion. In other words, the only consistent (mechanical) theory of the infallibility of councils is one which makes councils superfluous. If such a theory had been known to the Church in the age of councils, the councils would not have been held.
§5. Content of Revelation. God Three in One and the Incarnation.
To dwell at length on the theology of Athanasius under this head is unnecessary here, not because there is little to say, but partly because what there is to say has been to some extent anticipated above, §§2, 3, and ch. ii. pp. xxxii., xxxvi., partly because the history of his life and work is the best exposition of what he believed and taught. That his theology on these central subjects was profoundly moulded by the Nicene formula is (to the present writer at least) the primary fact (see ch. ii. §3 (1), and (2) b). This of course presupposes that the Nicene faith found in him a character and mind prepared to become its interpreter and embodiment; and that this was so his pre-Nicene writings sufficiently shew.
For instance, his progressive stress on the Unity of the Godhead in Father, Son, and Spirit is but the following up of the thought expressed de Incarn. 17. 1 en mono to heautou Patri holos on kata panta. It may be noted that he argues also from the idea of the Trinity to the coessential Godhead of the Spirit, ad Serap. i. 28, sq., Trias de estin ouch heos onomatos monon...alla alethei& 139; kai huparxei trias...eipatosan palin...trias estin e duas; and that he meets the difficulty (see infra, p. 438, ten lines from end, also Petav. Trin. VII. xiv.) of differentiating the relation of the Spirit to the Father from the gennesis of the Son by a confession of ignorance and a censure upon those who assume that they can search out the deep things of God (ib. 17-19). The principle might be applied to this point which is laid down de Decr. 11, that an act' belonging to the essence of God, cannot, by virtue of the simplicity of the Divine Nature, be more than one: the act' therefore of divine gennesis (the nature of which we do not know) cannot apply to the Spirit but only to the Son. But I do not recollect any passage in which Athanasius draws this conclusion from his own premises. The language of Athanasius on the procession of the Spirit is unstudied. In Exp. Fid. 4, he appears to adopt the procession' of the Spirit from the Father through the Son (after Dionysius, see Sent. Dion. 17). In Serap. i. 2, 20, 32, iii. 1, he speaks of the Spirit as idion tou Logou, just as the Word is idios tou Patros. His language on the subject, expressing the idea common to East and West (under the cloud of logomachies which envelop the subject) might possibly furnish the basis of an eirenicon' between the two separated portions of Christendom. In explaining the theophanies' of the Old Testament, Athanasius takes a position intermediate between that of the Apologists, &c. (supr., p. xxiii.) who referred them to the Word, and that of Augustine who referred them to Angels only. According to Athanasius the Angel' was and was not the Word: regarded as visible he was an Angel simply, but the Voice was the Divine utterance through the Word (see Orat. iii. 12, 14; de Syn. 27, Anath 15, note; also Serap. i. 14).